Music of Nature’s Website

Here are a few resources that I’ve found myself using–but please, if you know of others, share them in the comments!

Bird Songs

• eNature has a section on the site called “Bird Audio” that allows you to select different calls to play. They also offer various free bird call ring tones. Once you’ve studied all these it may be fun to take their bird call quiz… I’m too chicken (ha!).
• Birdjam not only offers up free songs to listen to, but also has playlists for certain habitats, as well as apps you can download for a small fee. I love the idea of bird call playlists by habitat!
• The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers free bird call noises and downloads with an exchange of an email address. They are always sending helpful information, so it’s a worthy trade.

for wildlife?

Frog Calls

These suckers are a little tricky to track down. I’ve found it useful to search your area for “frog calls” based on state or region and not just the generic search. This works with bird calls too… Also—if you’re already interested in frog calls and identification, I highly recommend getting involved with Frog Call USA (if you’re in the U.S., that is).

• Cleveland Museum of Natural History has Ohio’s frogs and toads
• U.S. Geological Survey’s Midwest Region has downloadable calls
• The Western Soundscape Archive has one of the most comprehensive lists of amphibians.
• The Cornell Lab of Ornithology also has an impressive amphibian downloadable list for what it’s worth.
• I heavily rely on Virginia Herpetological Society’s amazing website for ID/calls so finding your local chapter may be the way to go!

Insects Noises

• Music of Nature – Master species insect list. (Hat tip to About Insects for reminding me of this.)
• Nature Songs has a few of the generic songs.
• Bug bytes by the USDA would be a bit of a better resource if it was more user friendly.

While I haven’t tried a “frog call channel” on Pandora, I will say there are a few albums of nature sounds on Spotify if you look hard enough. A few of the compilations worth searching for on Spotify are:

• “Sounds of North American Frogs” (keeping in mind this collection came together in 1958 so the scientific names are sadly incorrect in a few cases)
• “Wild Tones Bird Calls”
• “Song birds: Parks and Gardens” – or another variation 

I have been unable to locate insects songs on Spotify, but hopefully some will be available soon. I’ve also been silly and made animal playlists by themes (one of my favorites is “Reptiles and Amphibians”) with songs that include a species in their title.

Do you listen to wildlife sounds? What sites do you use?

I have a special place in my heart for toads because of Grandpa.

The year was 1975 and my mother, 9-year-old brother and I, age 5, were spending another summer at my grandparents’ home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We had just finished a dinner of breaded pork chops and potato salad, and the grown-ups were at the kitchen table playing cards. My brother and I were sitting on the steps to the backyard, our silhouettes growing darker in the beam of light shining from the kitchen as the sun began to set.

Grandpa was a kindly soul and while he didn’t say a lot to us, he was always ready with a joke or a piece of rock candy when he came home from a long day of cutting glass. He could see we were bored, so without a word, he got up and grabbed a couple of large metal flashlights from the back porch, gave them to us, pointed at the grass and went back to playing cards. My brother and I just looked at each other, knowing we were supposed to wait for something to happen—but what?

Just then, lumps seem to emerge in the grass as if by magic. What were they, fairies? I shone the light on one of the larger lumps coming our way. Gleaming gold eyes stared back at us. I almost screamed! Then it hopped into the light: a toad, one of a great menagerie of hopping black-speckled gold and brown balls of various sizes. The grass looked like popcorn popping on a stove. Suddenly, we knew the game.

I ran out to the grass and picked up the biggest one I could find. It puffed up so much I could barely grasp it in my tiny hands. I was so proud of discovering what I called the “king of toads,” I ran into the house to show Grandpa. “You may have the grand prize winner!” he proclaimed. Everyone applauded and didn’t even mind as the dirt from the toad was smeared all over my shirt after I returned him to his place in the yard.

When Grandpa died, I asked for our lucky toad-hunting flashlight because all one might need for finding a toad and a love of nature is a source of water, a flashlight and a vivid imagination.

So the summer went: the great toad game of who would find the most toads or the biggest one, the one with the prettiest spots or the fastest jumper, and each night ending with a firework display above the water dishes. I never got tired of it.

By the time we were teenagers, my brother and I had stopped spending every summer at my grandparents. When I was 20, I visited them after not seeing them for many years. At first, Grandpa didn’t know what to do with this grown-up grandchild. Then, he silently got up out of his lounge chair, went to the back porch and picked up one of those heavy metal flashlights. I followed him out the back door.

“I haven’t seen them for years since they built up over that pond in back of us,” Grandpa said apologetically. “But we’ll try.” After nearly a half hour, we finally saw him: a lone majestic toad prince peering out from under the shed. I gently picked him up and showed my prize to Grandpa. “I guess you win this round,” he proclaimed with a grin.

That was the last time I saw Grandpa before he died. I had indeed won, both memories I treasure and an enduring appreciation of toads. Along with Grandpa, these wondrous creatures will always sit in a special place in my heart. Never underestimate the power of grandparents or a simple backyard experience with nature to inspire one’s love of it for a lifetime.

Be Out There

NWF’s Be Out There® program offers many guides for parents and grandparents on how to grow the enjoyment of nature in your backyard and beyond. See the new Nature Play at Home Guide for tips on how to create nature play spaces at home and get The Dirt on Dirt, on why letting kids get dirty is a good thing.

Get More About Wildlife

Read and subscribe to National Wildlife magazine’s Animals Channel for more articles on wildlife, including How to Dote on Toads and Frogs Need Our Help, So Hop to It!

Blanchard's Cricket Frog. Photo by: Dick Bartlett

Growing up with about 10 acres of woods behind my house and a brook flowing right through the middle of it, I am no stranger to frogs. During the hot summer days in Rhode Island, my friends and I would wade in the small pools as we ventured out on “missions” playing GI Joe. All around us, there were frogs leaping about as we crept along the brook.  Spring and early summer nights were always my favorite though. You could sleep with the windows open and listen to a performance every night. With woods surrounding our house on 3 sides and being at the end of the street, it was the perfect place to listen to a choir of frogs.

How Are Frogs Faring This Leap Year?

Check out our factsheet on the threats from climate change frogs are facing.

The quick rundown goes like this:

• Frog and toad habitats are drying up as reduced snowmelt means less water for ponds and streams.
• The Sierra Nevada Yellow Legged Frog has disappeared from 90% of its mountain habitat.
• Many frog species are becoming more susceptible to disease.
• Drought, wildfires, and shifts in climate are forcing frogs out of house and home.  Just look at the Houston Toad fighting for survival in Texas.

Take our online quiz to learn some more fun frog facts!

Preventing Carbon Pollution

Carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants, refineries, and vehicles is causing worldwide climate change. Thankfully, EPA is taking action to limit our nation’s carbon pollution from new and existing power plants. The sooner we can reduce carbon pollution, the greater chance we will have to slow climate change

This Leap Year, take action to protect frogs and support EPA’s new rules to limit carbon pollution from power plant smokestacks so we can take a leap forward in the fight against climate change.

A concerned reader writes: “I hear that April is National Frog Month, so I would like to know, how do I tell whether I am a frog?  And if I am one, can I get some sort of government benefits during National Frog Month?” (signed) Ambivalent Amphibian, living in the Land of Whimsy (The Land of Whimsy lies precisely on the US/Canadian border; nearly 3,000 miles long, it is nothing wide, making it hard to visit unless you book a flight of the imagination). To these questions I respond:

Dear Ambivalent Amphibian:
 

A bullfrog in a wetland. The bullfrog is the largest frog in North America, weighing up to a pound.

If you are a frog you get government benefits year round through programs that protect wetlands and other places frogs can’t live without.  If you are especially rare, you might get benefits from the Endangered Species Act. You can also get benefits from private efforts, such as protected areas provided by people who sign up for NWF’s Backyard Habitat program and offer living space for frogs. 
 
To get these benefits you must first, as you wisely suggest, establish if you are a frog. Frogs do differ widely from other animals. Here are six ways to tell if you are a frog:

1. Do friends often call you a toad? If you answer yes, then you may be a frog. Frogs and toads belong to a group scientists call Anurans (meaning, “without tails”), and there is no real difference, scientifically speaking, between frogs and toads. Basically, toads are frogs that may spend most of their time on dry land. As a result, they tend to have drier skin than more water-oriented frog species and their skin is likely to be rougher, which helps camouflage them in the knobby world of dirt, sand and leaf litter. So if you look like a toad, there is a good chance you are a frog.
2. Do you have four legs? Frogs are four-legged creatures. They also may have webbed feet, a trait especially common in water-loving frogs, or they may have little round pads at the tips of their toes with skin especially designed for climbing, a useful trait for frogs that live in trees. Regardless of your feet, if you look like a toad and have four legs, you may be a frog.
3. Are your hind legs built for leaping? Frogs typically have long hind legs with extra joints, unknown in mammals, that help frogs leap usually far. Muscles in the hind legs are long and powerful, especially those used for jumping—the muscles used to get legs back into place after a leap are much smaller and weaker. How good are frogs at jumping? Well, the best is probably the Australian rocket frog, which can jump 50 times its body length—covering more than 6 feet of ground. This leap would be like a 6-foot tall man jumping the length of a football field. If you look like a toad, have four legs, and your hind legs are built for jumping, you may be a frog.
4. When you were young, did you have a tail and gills and live in water?  If so, you may have been a tadpole, sometimes called pollywogs. Tadpoles have gills and have long tails that help them swim with speed and agility. Most eat nothing but algae and other small plants, but some may eat insects and their young. They hatch from soft, shell-less eggs that their mothers lay in ponds or in the quiet pools of streams. Mothers may lay their eggs at the end of winter, when the water is still cold and therefore holds more oxygen than it will later in the year when temperatures rise. Not all frogs lay eggs in water, though. Some frogs carry their eggs on their backs, or in their mouths, or even keep their babies in their stomachs until they are ready to enter the world. But most frogs start out as eggs in water and hatch into tadpoles. Then, in one 24-hour period, the tadpole changes into a frog—its eyes move to the top of its head, its gills disappear, its legs show up and its body shortens. If you look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, you are very likely to be a frog.
5. Do you eat mostly or entirely meat? Most adult frogs eat only insects, worms, and, sometimes—if the frog is large—small mammals and even baby water birds, such as ducklings. The biggest frog of all is West Africa’s Goliath frog, which can weigh more than 6 and1/2 pounds—the size of a small house cat. The largest U.S. frog is the bullfrog, which can reach a full pound. The important point here is, do you eat only or mostly other animals? If you look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, and you eat mostly or only other animals, you are almost certainly a frog.
6. Can you breathe through your skin? All but one of the 5,000 known frog species have lungs for breathing on land, but they also can breathe through their skin when in water. However, frogs don’t have the ribs and muscles that help birds and mammals to breathe. Frogs breathe by puffing out the throat and squeezing the floor of the mouth, so when you watch a frog breathe, you will see its throat moving. Do your chin and throat move when you breathe, and can you breathe through your skin? Then, if you also look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, and you eat mostly or only other animals, I would say, yes, you are a frog.

Finally, let’s look at some things that don’t rule out the possibility that you are a frog. If you live in trees, you may still be a frog, because many frogs, especially in the tropics, live and even breed in trees. If you are poisonous, like certain plants, you still may be a frog—many frog species secrete skin chemicals poisonous to mammals, birds and other creatures that may feed on them, including humans. Some South American Indian people use the skin secretions of certain frogs to poison the tips of hunting darts. You do not even have to be green to be a frog (though if you live in a pond full of green plants, being green may help you hide from prey and enemies).  Some frogs are bright red or blue or yellow—often these bright frogs are poisonous, and their color warns predators away from them. 

So that’s it.  If you do turn out to be a frog, have a happy National Frog Month and learn more about frogs at: 

Living  with Frogs

“Want to Host a Garden Party for Frogs?”

“How to Dote on Toads”

Attracting frogs 

Fun with Frogs

Tree frog game 

Frog Facts

About frogs

Just Getting Around

On land, frogs and toads are constantly jumping.  Frogs are generally recognized as the best jumpers of all vertebrates. The Australian rocket frog, for example, can leap over 50 times its body length (two inches) resulting in jumps of close to seven feet.

Kangaroos are marsupial mammals and are the only large animals to use hopping as a principal means of locomotion. The comfortable hopping speed for red kangaroos, for example, is about 15 mph, but they can reach speeds of 40 mph over short distances.  Moreover, some kangaroos can leap more than 10 feet in the air when they have to.

Kangaroo rats are small rodents native to North America.  Their name comes from their bipedal mode of movement as they hop around in a manner that reminds one of kangaroos.

Lemurs are a form of primate unique to Madagascar.  In addition to their incredible looks, some species have an equally incredible way of jumping instead of running (this video shows how unusual and fascinating lemur leaping can be).

Other creatures known for hopping and jumping as they move about include rabbits and grasshoppers.

Gazelles are a species of antelope that mostly walk until they get excited (or threatened).  The tiny Thompson’s gazelle exhibits the very distinctive behavior of “stotting” (running slowly and jumping very high before fleeing).  Like kangaroos, gazelles can leap more than 10 feet into the air.

Jumping on Attack

A species of snake common to Mexico and Central America is known as the jumping viper.  This name comes from its ability to launch itself up to two feet at an attacker during a strike.  In essence, they strike at their assailants with such force that they leave the ground

Jumping spiders are also a species that leaps to attack.  There are 5,000 species of jumping spider in the world which makes up about 13% of all spider species. Interestingly when they leap, they spin a silky thread of web behind them just in case they miss their mark and need to climb back up.

Jumping In Migration

Many creatures use their ability to leap in migration.  Gazelles are one example, but fish can do the same.  As salmon make their way upstream they are able to shoot themselves 10 to 12 feet up a waterfall.   This assumes they are not snatched from mid air by a hungry bear as they make it to their spawning grounds.  The trip is hazardous and the jumping itself can be so draining the these fish can take hours to recover as this video shows.

Jumping Big Cats

Lions and tigers can jump almost equally high.  The vertical leap record for a tiger is more than 12 feet, and the lion is just a few inches less.

The puma is, however, the best jumper of all the mammals.  Pumas, or mountain lions, can leap more than 20 feet straight up without a running start

Jumping For Fun

Even masssive whales can jump straight up out of the water.  Humpbacked whales are famous for this behavior, which is referred to as breaching.  Their tails may still be in the water, but a whale’s head can be 30 feet or more in the air.

Orcas, often called killer whales, can jump close to 20 feet in the air and they actually leave the water (watch this amazing video showing an orca breach).

The mackerel shark holds the fish record for a highest jump from the water having soared more than 20 feet above the waves.

There are, of course, flying fish, but they use their fins to soar many yards but ususally stay low to the water.

Jumping to Come Ashore

Seals and penguins are land dwellers that spend much of their time in the water.  When they come to shore they are sometimes forced to make a huge water-powered leap such shown in this video of penguins springing up on to the Antarctic ice from the sea.  They often jump back into the water feet first.

Jumping from on High

Flying squirrels do not really fly.   They take huge leaps of faith and glide to their destination from on high.  The longest known glide is close to 100 yards. (Watch this video of flying squirrels.)

Jumping Beans

OK, you are saying to yourself that a Mexican jumping bean is not an animal.  That is true.  But inside the bean lurks a larval moth that puts the “jumping” into jumping bean. The moths jump when they get hot, trying to snap their body into a cooler place, as this “weird nature” video reveals.

So there you have it – a look at wild creatures that hop, jump and spring across the land, the water and into the air.  At the National Wildlife Federation we hope to see many great places for these amazing species, and all of the other “jumpers” of the world set aside and protected.

Hop on over to our website for more fun facts, posters, activities, lesson plans and games to help you celebrate National Wildlife Week >>